


Read to Me

by cminerva



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Books are a Love Language, Dying Leader, F/M, Romance, never lend books, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-26
Updated: 2020-11-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:20:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27726080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cminerva/pseuds/cminerva
Summary: There is a vast list of things Laura and Bill will never have time to learn about the other. But this is something.
Relationships: William Adama/Laura Roslin
Comments: 6
Kudos: 13





	Read to Me

**Author's Note:**

> Last week I pulled some files from my old laptop and was amazed and delighted to find WIPs and some completed fics that I had forgotten all about! This is one of the completed pieces.

With the vicious therapy recommended by Cottle, Laura had days when her skin crawled, her stomach clenched, and the last thing she wanted was to have someone touch her, speak to her, or require that she return the favor. Today was one of the bad days and when Bill appeared at her side in the sickbay, she almost told him to leave. Even the thought of listening to his voice, something that generally helped ease her suffering, was too much for her to handle. But he seemed eager to share something with her and so Laura faked a smile when he sat in the chair next to her bed.

“I found something on my shelves this morning,” he told her, and Laura felt a tinge of pleasure thinking about him spending time preparing for these moments with her. “I haven’t read this one in years, not since I was a boy actually. It was my mother’s favorite.”

Laura opened her eyes then. Bill had never spoken to her of his mother. Something Lee had mentioned long ago had suggested that she had died when Bill was quite young. When she saw the book he had brought, Laura managed a genuine smile. An old, worn copy of  _ Little Women _ rested in Bill’s large hands.

“I loved that book as a girl,” she told him, voice raspy from her medication. She coughed after exerting such effort and Bill moved to assist her with the cup of water that was a permanent fixture at her bedside.

When she’d had a drink and let her head fall back onto the pillow, exhausted from that simple task, Bill gently touched her cheek and resumed his seat where he seemed content to sit and watch her in silence.

After a few moments, when her head was no longer spinning and she felt it safe to open her eyes, Laura turned to Bill.

“Read to me?” She whispered the words, not trusting her voice.

He nodded and opened to the first page.

It was like hearing from an old friend after years of separation. The familiar words washed over her, lulling her into a state of peace that a new book could never hope to accomplish.

Laura was surprised to find that there were tears leaking from her closed eyelids. She touched her cheeks and wiped the wetness away.

“Laura?” Bill had noticed her movement and was now looking at her with concern.

“It’s nothing.” She tried to brush off his interest, but when he laid the book in his lap and continued to stare she knew it was no use.

“It’s just been such a long time since I’ve read that book,” she told him. “I’d forgotten how much I loved it. I used to read it with my sisters.”

There she stopped. She had never told Bill about her sisters, and it was dangerous territory. Bill seemed to understand this and resumed his reading after a moment more. But Laura couldn’t help thinking about her long lost family as the familiar words by Louisa May Alcott filled her ears.

As much as Laura had cherished this book, her sisters had loved it even more. They had liked to dress up as the sisters in the book for hours on end and their parents had indulged them in their playacting, their father even calling them his “little women”, quoting the father from the book.

It was a grand game, and they each had their favorite March sister. To no one’s surprise, Laura had claimed Jo as her character, seeing much of herself in the independent and spirited heroine. Cheryl had liked Meg for her sweet ways, and her happy family. Sharon always claimed Amy, and indeed she was the youngest and consistently drawn to pretty things.

These were happy memories that she had not turned to for years. After Cheryl and Sharon had died in a car accident with their father Laura had been overcome by grief and since moving past that had not wished to venture back into those turbulent emotions.

To be honest, she had not thought much about her sisters at all since the attacks on the colonies. She had thought about her mother often, as she battled the cancer that she had witnessed her mother succumb to, but memories of her sisters had taken a backseat to the events of the past few years. Adding that pain on top of everything else was really just too much.

Yet it was nice to drift back to her childhood as Bill’s beloved voice washed over her. As the March sisters moved through the trials and tribulations of their youth, Laura let her mind carry her through a slideshow of her own. She lovingly remembered the sisters she had lost and their adventures; Sharon sneaking in through Laura’s window when she was long past curfew, Cheryl’s quickly regretted tattoo. Sharon’s baby shower.

Laura abruptly pulled back from these memories as they began to carry her to places she would have rather avoided. She turned her head and watched Bill instead, tracing his features with her gaze and wondering about the mother who had loved the book her son was now reading. She was curious to know if the inscription she had seen written on the inside cover of the book was intended for Mrs. Adama and whether she had read this novel aloud to her son. Laura smiled at the thought of Bill as a child. He must have been a handful.

Considering the man at her bedside, Laura realized that there was a vast list of things that the two of them would never know about the other. Her time was limited, and she wanted to live for the moment. Yet this meant she would never know much about Bill’s family, and he would know next to nothing about hers. This saddened her, until she reflected that she now knew at least one thing about his past. His mother had loved  _ Little Women _ . And her son had grown up cherishing it as well. That was something at least.

“As she spoke, Jo took off her bonnet, and a general outcry arose, for all her abundant hair was cut short."

As Bill read this familiar line, Laura could not help but laugh at the irony.

Bill looked up from the page and smiled.

“What’s so funny?” He feigned ignorance, but his eyes sparkled.

Laura slipped a hand under her headscarf and touched the smooth skin of her scalp, bare for weeks thanks to the cancer treatments.

“I’ve lost my one beauty,” she told him, the laughter bubbling forth with her words.

Bill moved to sit on the edge of her bed and pressed a kiss at her temple, his lips tracing her nonexistent hairline.

“Hardly,” he told her. “I can’t say that I’ve noticed.”

“Liar,” she slapped at his chest, but she was grinning.

“So what were you thinking about while I was reading?” Bill’s question caught her off guard, startling her into answering truthfully.

“My sisters.”

He nodded, and his gaze never left her face. After a moment, he spoke again.

“What were their names?”

“Cheryl and Sharon,” she whispered, swallowing the emotions that rose up as she spoke their names for the first time in years.

“Did you read this book to them?”

“My mother read it to us first, when I was old enough I read it aloud to my sisters,” Laura paused, then smiled and continued. “Eventually they knew it so well they could recite the lines right along with me. It used to drive me crazy!”

She laughed at the memory, and Bill smiled.

“It’s good to know I’m not the only one who can do that,” he commented.

“When Sharon was eight, she insisted upon wearing a clothespin on her nose before bed,” Laura continued, her hand in Bill’s but her mind much farther away. “One time she fell asleep with it on, and it left a mark that wouldn’t go away for a week. Mom was so mad with me and Cheryl for letting her fall asleep with it on, and that was the end of the clothespin.”

Laura stopped speaking and stared at the ceiling. She hadn’t thought about her family this much in years, and it didn’t bring the overwhelming grief and loss she had feared it would. Instead, she could almost feel the childlike joy of playacting and hear the shrill voices of her sisters as they ran about together, not knowing the heartaches and joy the future would bring.

With these memories filling her thoughts, Laura’s eyes sought Bill’s and she smiled.

“Read to me?”

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written in 2009 for a Make Laura Happy Challenge on LiveJournal. The prompt was "make Laura happy with women".
> 
> And yes, I realize Bill probably wouldn't make it to to the scene were Jo cuts her hair in one sitting, but it works damn it.


End file.
